Town and Country; or, life at home and abroad, without and within us eBook

He had crossed the floor half a dozen times, when
in came the same youth, shouting “Copy, sir,
copy!”

“Copy what?” shouted Jake, laying hold
of the boy’s shirt-sleeve. “Tell
me what you want copied! tell me, sir, or I will shake
your interiors out of you-”

The boy was small, but spunky. His education
had been received at the corners of the streets.
He had never taken lessons of a professor, but he
had practised upon a number of urchins smaller than
himself, and had become a thoroughly proficient and
expert pugilist.

It was not for Bill Bite to be roughly handled by
any one, not even by an editor. So he pushed
him from him, and said,

“I want copy; that’s a civil question,—­I
want a civil answer.”

Jake’s organ of combativeness became enlarged.
He sprang at the boy, grasped him by the waist, and
would have thrown him down stairs, had not a movement
the boy made prevented him.

Bill’s arms were loose, and, nearing the table,
he took the inkstand and dashed the contents into
the face of his assailant.

“Murder!” shouted the editor.

“Copy!” shouted the boy; and such a rumpus
was created, that up came Mr. Pica, saying that the
building was so shaken that an article in type on
the subject of “Health and Diet” suddenly
transformed itself into “pi.”

The two belligerents were parted; the editor and Master
Bill Bite stood at extremes. At this crisis who
should enter but Mr. Stubbs, senior, who, seeing his
son’s face blackened with ink, inquired the
cause rather indignantly; at which Mr. Pica, not recognizing
in the indignant inquirer the father of the “talented
editor,” turned suddenly about and struck him
a blow in the face, that displaced his spectacles,
knocked off his white hat into a pond of ink, and made
the old fellow see stars amid the cobwebs and dust
of the ceiling.

The son, seeing himself again at liberty, flew at
the boy, and gave him “copy” of a very
impressive kind.

Down from the shelves came dusty papers and empty
bottles, whilst up from the printing-office came the
inmates, to learn the cause of the disturbance.

A couple of police-officers passing at the time, hearing
the noise, entered, and one of them taking Mr. Stubbs,
senior, and the other Mr. Stubbs, junior, bore them
off to the lock-up.

This affair put a sudden stop to “The Buzz of
the Nation.” The first number never made
its appearance.

Mr. Pica, having obtained the amount of the check,
went into the country for his health, and has not
been heard from since.

Elder Stubbs and Stubbs the younger paid a fine of
five dollars each; and when they reached home and
related to Mrs. Stubbs the facts in the case, she
took off her spectacles, and, after a few moments’
sober thought, came to the sage conclusion that her
son Jake was not made for an editor.